CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

June 20, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

CHUWI LapBook 12.3 Apollo Lake Laptop with 2736 x 1824 Display Sells for $300 (Promo)

CHUWI LapBook 12.3 is a laptop powered by an Intel Celeron N3450 “Apollo Lake” processor, with 6GB RAM, 64GB storage, and a high-resolution display that ships with Windows 10 Home, and is supposed to support Ubuntu too. While the laptop was announced last April for $349, it has now started to sell for $299.99 on GearBest with coupon CHUWI123 valid for the first 100 orders only, after which you should be able to get it for $309.99 during flash sales. CHUWI LapBook 12.3 specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron N3450 quad core “Apollo Lake” processor @ 1.1 GHz / 2.2 GHz (Burst frequency) and 12 EU Intel HD graphics 500 @ 200 MHz / 700 MHz (Burst freq.); 6W TDP System Memory – 6GB DDR3 Storage – 64 GB eMMC flash + micro SD slot up to 128 GB + M.2 SSD up to 256 GB Display – 12.3″ IPS display […]

June 20, 2017June 20, 2017 by Karl Johnson - No Comments

Raiscube R2 (Prusa I3 Clone) 3D Printer Review – Part 2: 3D Print Samples, E3D Clone Installation, Tips & Tricks

Karl here with part 2 Exploring Raiscube R2. That is the official name by Raiscube. Gonna look at some more prints. Some mistakes I made in first part and some simple mods. Maybe not so much mistakes but an oversight. Oversight / Mistake So in the first part of Raiscube Prusa i3 review, I mentioned there were not very good instructions, and they sent a blank SD card with the kit. I was wrong. On first inspection, it looked like a factory sealed SD card but it is not. It is an 8 GB card with videos, instructions, pictures, parts list, STL, and gcode files as well as an old version of Cura. Not blank at all with about 1.5 GB of files. It didn’t include settings but if you install the latest Cura, it just takes a little tweaking to print well. Official specs from SD card Brand RAISCUBE […]

June 19, 2017June 20, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Intel Quark S1000 “Sue Creek” Processor to Support On-Chip Speech Recognition

Intel may have announced plans to discontinue several of their IoT boards, but based on some documents I received, the company has not given up on the Quark family, although they may have given up on the Intel architecture for low power microprocessor, as Intel Quark S1000 – codenamed “Sue Creek” – will feature two Tensilica LX6 cores (yes, just like ESP32), and is designed to handle speech recognition at the edge (e.g. locally), so some of your voice commands should still work when Internet is down. Intel Quark S1000 key features and specifications: Digital Signal Processors Dual Tensilica LX6 cores @ 400 MHz with HiFi3 DSP Single precision scalar floating-point instructions 16KB 4-way I$; 48KB 4-way D$ Up to 2400 DMIPS, 3.2 GMACS (16×16), 800 MFLOPS of Compute Speech Accelerators A GMM (Gaussian Mixture Model) and neural network accelerator Low power keyboard and limited vocabulary recognition Up to 9.6 […]

June 19, 2017June 20, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Intel Issues End-of-Life Notices for Galileo / Galileo 2, Edison and Joule Boards & Modules

While I’m not sure many of my readers are using them, Intel introduced several IoT development kits and modules over the years, with products like Intel Galileo, followed by Galileo 2, Edison module development board all based on Quark processors, and more recently Intel Joule modules powered by Intel Atom T550x / T570x processors. The three boards / modules and corresponding modules will soon be no more, as Intel issues three end-of-life (EOL) notices for: Intel Galileo Board, and Intel Galileo Gen2 Board Products – PDF Select Intel Edison Compute Module, Intel Edison Breakout Board, Intel Edison Kit for Arduino, and Intel Edison Breakout Board Kit Products – PDF Intel Joule 570x Compute Module, Intel Joule 550x Compute Module, Intel Joule 570x Developer Kit and, Intel Joule 550x Developer Kit Products – PDF All three follow the same “forecasted key milestones”: June 16, 2017 – Product Discontinuance Program Support Begins […]

June 19, 2017June 19, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Microchip based Orange LoRa Explorer Kit Connects to Orange’s own LoRaWAN Network

You’d think Telecom operators with all infrastructure in place would focus their IoT efforts on LTE Cat M1 or LTE Cat NB-IoT, but Orange has setup its own LoRa network in France with the aim of achieving national coverage by December 2017, at which time they’ll also test interconnection and roaming with other European operators. The company has also launched the LoRa Explorer Kit based on Microchip solutions, and designed by SODAQ. Orange LoRa Explorer Kit specifications: MCU – Microchip Atmel SAMD21 ARM Cortex M0+ MCU @ 48 MHz with 256KB flash, 32KB RAM, up to 16KB EEPROM by emulation Storage – 4Mbit serial flash (Microchip SST25PF040C) Connectivity Microchip RN2483A LoRa module + PCB antenna Microchip RN4871 Bluetooth 4.2 module (BLE) with ceramic antenna Security – Microchip ATECC508A1 crypto chip to securely store LoRa keys. USB – 1x micro USB port for charging and programming Expansion – “Arduino M0” compatible headers with 10-bit […]

June 18, 2017June 18, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 81 Comments

NanoPi NEO NAS Kit Review – Assembly, OpenMediaVault Installation & Setup, and Benchmarks

NAS Dock v1.2 for Nano Pi NEO / NEO 2 is, as the name implies, a complete mini NAS kit for 2.5″ drive for NanoPi NEO or NEO 2 board. The NEO 2 board is strongly recommended, since it’s not much more expensive, but should deliver much better results due to its Gigabit Ethernet interface. I’ve received two of those kits together with several other boards & accessories from FriendlyELEC, and today I’ll show how to assemble the kit, configure OpenMediaVault, and run some benchmarks. NAS Kit V1.2 Assembly with NanoPi NEO 2 Board The only extra tool you’ll need is a screwdriver, and potentially a soldering iron as we’ll see further below. The metal box is stuff wih accessories so the first thing is to open one or two sides to take out the content. We have the mainboard, NanoPi NEO back plate, NanoPi NEO 2 back plater, a […]

June 17, 2017June 17, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Design Amazon Alexa Gateways, Robots and Smart Speakers with WisCore Modular Development Kit

RAK Wireless has launched a new development board powered by Mediatek MT7628A processor running OpenWrt with built-in WiFi and Ethernet connectivity, and audio codec and microphone to support Amazon Alexa voice service. Bluetooth, Zigbee, and Z-wave will also be supported via UART modules. Wiscore Specifications: Processor – Mediatek MT7628A MIPS24KEc CPU @ up to 580MHz System Memory – 128MB DDR2 (64 MB optional) Storage – 16 MB flash + micro SD card Audio MicroSemi ZL38062 for audio in and out MicroSemi ZL38067 to handle “Alexa” keyword single or dual digital microphone up to 5 meter range Far field voice wake up Support for echo cancellation Connectivity 802.11 b/g/n WiFi 2×2 MIMO up to 300 Mbps 2x 10/100M Ethernet (LAN and WAN) Optional UART modules for Bluetooth, ZigBeem Z-Wave USB – 1x USB 2.0 host port Expansion – Arduino headers with UART, I2C, SPI and GPIOs Power Supply – 5V via […]

June 16, 2017November 13, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Zidoo X7 RK3328 TV Box to Sell for $69 with Android 7.1

Rockchip RK3328 processor has been getting some attention recently with low cost RK3328 TV boxes, Pine64’s ROCK64 development board, and now Zidoo has announced they are working on their X7 TV box with slightly better specifications and a product that should get better support than the cheaper models. Zidoo X7 specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3328 quad core Cortex A53processor @ 1.5 GHz with Mali-450MP2 GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage – 8GB eMMC flash + micro SD slot Video Output – HDMI 2.0a port up to 4K @ 60 Hz with HDR support + 3.5mm AV port (composite video) Audio Output – HDMI, AV (stereo audio), and optical S/PDIF Video Codecs – H.264/AVC Base/Main/High/High10 profile @ level 5.1; up to 4Kx2K @ 60fps H.265/HEVE Main/Main10 profile @ level 5.1 High-tier; up to 4Kx2K @60fps VP9, up to 4Kx2K @ 60fps Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet, dual band 802.11ac WiFi and […]